Category: Content

Content

October 19: Earthquakes, Car Jacking, Random Shootings, Ice Cream Vans

Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto series will no doubt break sales records and cause outrage in October this year when another instalment, set in San Andreas and featuring an interesting earthquake game mechanic. The Edinburgh-based developer is owned by Take Two Interactive of New York, and with joint sales of 23 million copies for the previous two titles, you’ll no doubt be thoroughly sick of seeing this one by the time Christmas comes.

If you live in the US, the publication date is the 19th October; if you live in Europe it’s the 22nd – either way you might want to stay out of Game until the mobs subside. Expect the usual tabloids to run the same articles on video game violence in the hope of selling more newspapers.

Rockstar North – Sex, Violence, Deep-fried Mars Bars

Google: Ban+this+sick+game

Electronic Frontier Foundation Propose a Licensing Scheme for Filesharers

After a year of research, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging copyright holders to join together to offer blanket licenses to P2P networks.

They are drawing parallels with the copyright problem radio once faced in the US – Performing Rights Organisations (PRO) such as ASCAP and BMI were founded to allow radio stations to play music legally and ensure that artists and publishers were properly compensated.

The EFF also regard music licensing in the internet age as dogged with the same problems that the player piano industry fought though in 1909 with sheet music manufacturers. This early situation was also solved by a blanket license.

The money to be made is attractive – if users paid, for example, US$5 per month, income to the music companies would be more than US$3 billion – and almost in pure profit as no CDs would have to be manufactured or shipped.

The EFF’s proposal (PDF)

Audiolunchbox – DRM-free music

Audiolunchbox.com specialises in indie music and amongst many bands we’ve never heard of (All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors, anyone?), the site provides non-DRM restricted legal downloads of tracks and albums from Moby, Sasha and even The Pretenders.

Some 160 labels have licensed content to Audiolunchbox, and they use a familiar distribution model — US99c allows you to download a track to your PC, and then you are free to store it, or use it on any capable device. Albums are available from US$8.99. Users buy a “Lunch card” in a variety of values, which helps to bring access to kids without credit cards.

There’s an interesting twist – the site also offers Ogg Vorbis encoded downloads, so at last it will be easier for Linux users to play legally purchased music on their distributions. As MP3 is a proprietary format, there are no open source codecs for the OS.

“When you purchase audio from us, do with it as you please, as long as it’s for personal use.” — from the website.

Audiolunchbox

Give Ogg Vorbis a try

Digital Home Working Group: “Share Content Anywhere, On Any Device”

Craig Barrett, CEO if Intel, is as annoyed as you are at the often badly implemented restrictions preventing people from using and sharing media on different devices. As part of the Digital Home Working Group (DHWG), due to publish their standards specification in Q2, Intel have come out against inflexible, confusing and unfair DRM programmes in the market, or in development.

Of course, much of the timing and pitch of the Intel/DHWG rumblings will be because they have a set of standards to plug, but they do have a point given the draconian DRM restrictions placed on users.

Ironically, DRM restrictions often make it harder to move or use the media that customers have actually paid for – an inconvenience that provokes some users into acquiring cracked or unsecured versions of media and files.

“The basic concept of the DHWG is the ability to use that content anytime, anywhere within your home once you’ve purchased it.” said Barrett.

Formed in 2003, the DHWG features more than a hundred other members, including Microsoft, Nokia and Sony. If they all agree on their set of standards, then adoption should not be an issue.

Hopefully the new standards will protect the content producers and artists whilst giving consumers the ability to use licensed content fairly.

Digital Home Working Group

DHWG’s chairman Scott Smyers: “The DHWG is open to all players.” (Downloadable WMV, interestingly enough)

More details of BBC iMP revealed – All content DRM’d

More details of the intriguing BBC interactive media player, iMP, first made public at IBC 2003, were revealed this evening at a AIGA meeting in London. Sara Watkins, Executive Producer, Broadband, BBC New Media gave the audience further details of what iMP will do and importantly, what it will not.

The most significant revelations were concerning the protection of the content. All content will be DRM’d, only available for a limited period time, once downloaded. As expected, it will also only be available to UK broadband users. In a break with the BBC’s long-standing support of Real, Microsoft DRM will be used for the technical trial, but it appears that no final decision has been made.

Sara started by running a video giving an overview of what the BBC hope the iMP will be and where it might go.

As was known previously, the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) will cover fourteen days; seven looking forward and seven backward. The programs that have been broadcasted will be downloadable to the computer simply by clicking on them. A preview of a piece can be watched before committing to download a complete show.

Although it was not mentioned in this presentation, in previous discussion we have had we understood that upcoming programs could be selected to download, once they have been broadcasted.

People will also be able to recommend programmes it to friends.


The iMP, originally envisaged by BBC man Ben Lavender, will be a PC-only application that will be downloaded from the BBC website.

Further into the future they are looking forward to having the content on other devices, such as portable music players and even further forward, towards mobile phones. This portable content will initially be limited to audio, as the rights to these programmes are nearly all owned solely by the BBC.

Running through the demonstration version of the product, we were shown the player would have four sections

_Library area

A list of the content residing on the computer will be shown, as you would expect from any filing system. A new revelation was that the rights information for each show would be displayed on the right hand side of the screen.

Each separate show will be capable of having its own DRM setting, primarily how many days it will reside on your machine and therefore, how quickly you will need to watch the show before it become unavailable.

The examples given were

Eastenders (most popular UK soap) might be available for two weeks
An episode of Blue Planet (recent super budget natural history programme) might be available for two days.

The amount of compression applied to each piece of content will vary, so the video quality will vary. More popular programmes will be lower quality but programmes that would benefit from better quality will receive it, such as Blue Planet.

_Traffic area

As per standard peer-to-peer (P2P) packages – showing what is being transferred to and from your machine at any time.

It was reiterated that P2P file sharing technologies would be used to automatically exchange content between broadband-connected computers running iMP, thus saving the BBC a considerable amount of money on individually serving each files.

_TV and radio guide areas

No real details were given about this.

Stages of development

The BBC plan to carry out an internal technical trial, where they will work out the logistics of how to get the content from its original source (tape, etc), how to will be encoded, archived and make it available.

Later in the year, possibly around Easter, a closed network of users will be given the product to test it. During this phase they hope to understand how effective the interface design is.

Following these stages they will enter a product development mode – taking all of the learning and re-polishing the product. No date was mentioned for a public release.

During the Q&A session another interesting revelation concerning the Greg Dyke’s idea floated at RTS Edinburgh 2003, the Creative Archive. The content that makes up the Creative Archive will be downloaded using a similar application, but will not be restricted by DRM enabling people to re-edit it, or use it to make other programmes. Importantly it will not be the complete BBC archive, the examples given was – it will be nature programmes but it will not be show such as Dad’s Army (An old very popular comedy show first show in the 1970’s).

AIGA London

Transcript

Eminem Sues Apple Over Unauthorised Use of Song

Because of what seems to be a rather surprising error by Apple, rap star Eminem is suing the computer company for featuring lyrics from the song “Lose Yourself”, sung in the advert by a ten year old boy, in their 2003 campaign for the iTunes music service.

Eminem’s company Eight Mile Style said “Eminem has never nationally endorsed any commercial products and … even if he were interested in endorsing a product, any endorsement deal would require a significant amount of money, possibly in excess of $10 million”.

The ad was shown multiple times on MTV, and it seems odd that Apple would feature the song without first seeking permission. Apple Computer has yet to comment.

Slashdot on Grey Tuesday, Slim and Apple

Alcatel Offers New Mobile Game and Music Video Services

Alcatel have announced two partnerships in a programme to provide mobile media and entertaiment to its customers.

First off: stealing a march on Nokia’s ailing N-Gage multiplayer efforts, “Xploded” is a game developed by wireless games firm BeTomorrow, and supports up to forty players in the same game.

Alcatel have also partnered with Universal Mobile to offer a new range of multimedia services using Universal content. Proposed offerings include video mailboxes and other video delivery services.

We’re certainly looking forward to forty-way Jerry Springer death-matches.

BeTomorrow

Ofcom Chair: UK with True Broadband by 2010

Fifty days in to Ofcom’s existence, its Chair David Currie delivered a speech to the Communications Management Association conference. He recapped on what Ofcom had been doing, then outlined where he felt it was going, focusing mainly on broadband.

We feel the most exciting part of the speech was, in his words, True Broadband.

Anyone with a real understanding of why broadband is such a vital part of the future will be hugely encouraged by his words. In summary, what is currently being sold as broadband to the UK consumer and many other around the world, a 512k connection, is not broadband. It is the equivalent of a 1200/75-baud modem.

We heartily agree with Currie view that ‘DSL at 512k is a convenience product’. He argues that it is not practical or possible for the UK to lurch from a 512k connection to something much faster – the current copper-wire based system we have simply would not support it.

Instead a target of 10Mbps should be set for 2010 and that it should be provided competitively. We read this as; the long lasting monopoly that BT has, and does enjoy will be removed. His comparison with the multi-supplier mobile market bears this out. In our view BT consistently hoodwinked Oftel. At first glance it looks like they will not have the same joy with Ofcom.

This was further underlined by his praise of the Parliamentary Trade and Industry Select Committee point that

‘[we must] make certain that the regulatory framework ensures that commercial decisions by private companies are aligned with the wider economic and social needs of the country.’

He and his colleagues clearly recognise and understand what is required for a proper broadband service. With connections being symmetric rather than the slow transmit, asymmetric we have now, he identified the need for the network to enable distributed system, not just central services delivering to the ends of the network. We also find it encouraging that he reiterated the pursuit of wireless connections.

Currie states his aim is ‘Liquid bandwidth; all you can eat; always on. No contention.’

Very encouraging.

Full text
David Currie, Ofcom chairman, Communications Management Association Annual Conference, 16 February 2004

Nokia and Samsung Work Together on Push to Talk

Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) is felt by the mobile phone business to become an exciting advance for consumers and business user alike.  PoC give a walkie-talkie style connection between two phones.

Nokia have been working on the technology for a while and have developed an open standards approach, which they have put forward to the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) for use by the industry. They currently have it on trial with 30 operators around the world.

To underline how useful it is, Nokia must be pleased to announce today that Samsung will be releasing products in 2004/5 that will use the standard.

Nokia Boss Admits N-Gage Below Expectations

Jorma Ollila Nokia chairman and chief executive, admitted to the Financial Times yesterday that the N-Gage, their gaming platform, has not been the success they had hoped for, in his words “The sales are in the lower quartile of the bracket we had as our goal.”

The original aim was to sell 9 million units within its first two years, but many feel that the €300 (£200, US$380) is too expensive when compared with other gaming-only platforms such as the Nintendo GameBoy. It has also been criticised for its lack of game support and difficulty in operating it, in particular requiring the removal of the battery to change the game. The cracking of their game copy protection method last year has also not helped them with game publishers.

Ollila said he plans to wait until November 2005 to decide if it has been a success or failure.